The Harvest is Great

Hi there!

Has your Kingdom Hall ever needed to have some work done? Perhaps it needed some new paint or bathroom fixtures? Usually, when work needs to be done, it is announced to the congregation, and the work is able to be financed by means of donations from the brothers and sisters. It's a fairly simple process.

Here in Ojo de Agua, however, the brothers and sisters simply do not have the financial circumstances to fund the major work that our Kingdom Hall needs to have done. The hall needs to be repainted and retiled. Our bathrooms also need some serious work - I haven't even dared to set foot in them after hearing some of the horror stories. So the brothers have thought of a very creative way to finance the renovation.

Domingo, a servant who lives right in Ojo, owns a large piece of property on which the congregation can harvest Jamaica. What is Jamaica, you may ask? Well, first of all, it isn't pronounced like Jamaica, the country. It's pronounced "ha-my'-ica." It is a type of hibiscus plant that can be used to make very flavorful tea, or wine. It's highly valuable here, and therefore, the congregation has been growing enough to sell and use the money to fund the renovation!

This is a very big project. When we arrived here in September, we went out one day and helped clean up the fields from plants that the congregation had sold just to purchase the Jamaica seeds alone! Now, the Jamaica has been planted and grown. It is time to harvest and sell. The entire congregation has been invited to help out whenever they can. It isn't just a one-day project. It will be going on for at least a few weeks. However, earlier this week, we were able to get a big group from the English and Sign Language congregations to go out to the fields and help!

You can't see us all, but there are SEVENTEEN of us squished in (and out of) this truck. It was a bumpy ride, to say the least, but since the congregation only has a few people helping in the fields each day, you can imagine how happy they were to have a big group coming along.

This is Maddie & Stephan, a married pioneer couple in our hall, from England & France, respectively. They were instrumental in organizing the group to come help. Look at her ride that motorcycle like it's nobody's business!

Here's how the process works:

1 - The brothers (and some tough sisters!) were stationed out in the fields (for four hours, mind you), cutting off the individual full-grown Jamaica flowers from the plants. As you can see, it is a HUGE field, and difficult to do in the hot sun, but it has to be done. You can see me in the background, working very hard as usual.

2 - The sisters were then using broken umbrellas handles (?) to extract the seeds of the Jamaica flower. Don't let the fact that they were in the nice shade fool you - their hands ended up dirtier than ours!

3 - The extracted seeds can now either be sold or replanted. The rest of the flower can be dried out to make tea, so the flowers are sold as well. 

Blue hands, anyone?

Like I said before, this is a very different means of financing renovation work than we would back home, but it will be well worth the reward. The goal is to have the renovation work done in time for the Memorial. I'm sure the brothers and sisters are going to be beaming with pride and joy upon seeing how beautiful the hall turns out!

It was definitely time for a frappe and some junk food after the long day.

But wait...this was just one afternoon! The brothers have been doing this EVERY afternoon for the past two weeks! Will we be going out to help again? ...I'll have to wait and see if I can fully wash my hands of the blue flower stains first. :)

Hope you all are well and are enjoying your December!

Sam